


Four Lives That Never Happened To Kay Howard

by chicating



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicating/pseuds/chicating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What might have been for our favorite case-clearing redhead?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Lives That Never Happened To Kay Howard

Four Lives That Never Happened to Kay Howard  
In one, she married Chick, had some kids, and went back to work at the K-mart when Lindsay got old enough to be in school all day. Mostly the job stank and she lived for weekends until they discovered that she had a genius for catching shoplifters. From out of nowhere, she could spot which older shoppers had yarn in their bags and which skulking teens were clearing the place out of Bartles and Jaymes. Her manager was very impressed. “But maybe you could smile more,” he added. “Having teenagers pee themselves in the back room is kind of bad for business...Kate, is it?”  
”Kay, sir. I was just trying to throw a little scare to them, sir.”  
”Well, you’re a little too good at it. It smells like a nursing home back there.”

One life ended prematurely, due to the placement of Gordon Pratt’s bullet. People who lived in Baltimore in the early ‘90s still remember the photos of the red-haired woman police and Griselda Patel’s heart-wrenching interview with the outraged, grieving father. “I begged her to quit,” Wesley Howard told Patel, “but she said it was what she was born to do.”Stanley Bolander left the department blaming himself, for he had overcome his initial skepticism and come to believe the red-haired spitfire natural po-lice. Beau Felton had somebody from Alcoholics Anonymous visit him during a rehab appointment, and in a strange way credited Howie with getting him back together with Beth.

Or maybe she and Ed Danvers tied a hasty knot right after he finally found his “better than average” law firm and she started taking pre-law classes instead of working(doodling through most of them because the law in school didn’t match her experience) and going to parties with people that talked like Munch but didn’t have that Eeyore thing that sometimes made her smile.California was too bright, and sometimes when she looked at her newly styled, shorn self in the mirror, she thought like a waterman “Who the fuck is that?” even though when she said those things in public, her new “friends” tended to titter and call her refreshing, which Kay suspected was half an insult at least, though they wouldn’t admit it.

She was half-a-step faster at picking up the phone on the Watson case, intending to show the rookie Bayliss what’s what. Instead she got a red mark on her reputation, and a death blow to her streak. Not to mention it caused every right-wing asshole with a radio to sound off on whether women could put down murders.(Maybe not theirs, she thought grimly, but most people’s, huh?) She couldn’t deal with the pressure of solving a crime for all of womenkind, and for the first time in a long time, her dreams were full of her facing a suspect in a dark alley, looking at her Glock with great temptation. It had been a long time since she let one get personal, and it put her off her game. But she would be damned if she would let Frank Pembleton say so.


End file.
